Walter gay

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Around 1884, the artist painted larger works and chose for his subject matter contemporary people engaged in such activities as spinning, weaving, and cigarette-making. Instead he featured eighteenth-century woodwork, furnishings, and decorative objects, a reflection not only of his taste as a collector but also of the contemporary interest in the Rococo style.

In 1907, they purchased this chateau which became quite a showplace and where they entertained extensively. Through these two older painters they became well acquainted with the Barbizon style. He supported himself during this period by painting still lifes such as Wild Flowers, 1876 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven).

 

Financial assistance from a group of friends enabled him to study in Europe beginning in the spring of 1876.

walter gay

Usually depictions of rooms in public buildings or distinguished private residences, these paintings are both an accurate record of the rooms they portray and a statement about the people who inhabited them. As his friend the painter Albert Gallatin (1882–1952) wrote in 1920, “Mr. He married the wealthy American expatriate Matilda Travers in London, and when they returned to Paris, her fortune provided the couple with a comfortable life.

However, during World War II, when Matilda was living there as a widow, German soldiers occupied the chateau, ruining much of the structure and plotting the destruction of the country the Gays loved so much. Exhibiting at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1879, Gay contributed regularly to the annual exhibition from then on. He also painted scenes of peasant life in Brittany.

Gay occasionally exhibited in New York, where he was elected to the Society of American Artists in 1880.

Part of his collection of decorative arts was given to the Louvre.

(Burke, Doreen Bolger, American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. III, A Catalogue of Works by Art and Artists Born between 1846 and 1864, 1980).

Museum Collections:
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
Cleveland Museum of Art, OH
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C.
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, PA
Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Musée Nationale de la Coopération Franco-américaine, Blérancourt
Museé Goya, Musées Midi-Pyrénées, Millau
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

Mark Murray Fine Paintings is a New York gallery specializing in buying and selling 19th century and early 20th century artwork. 

Please contact us if you are interested in selling your Walter Gay paintings or other artwork from the 19th century and early 20th century. 

Walter Gay

Artist

born Hingham, MA 1856-died Breau, France 1937

Born
Hingham, Massachusetts, United States

Died
Breau, France

Biography

An expatriate who left Boston for Brittany, Gay began his career with genre scenes from eighteenth-century life, shifting in 1884 to the kind of realistic peasant picture seen in Novembre Étaples [SAAM, 1977.111].

Upon visiting Auvers-sur-Oise, they met the French painter Charles Daubigny(1817–1878), and in Barbizon, they visited the American expatriate William P. Babcock (1826–1899). Concentrating on figure painting, he produced small genre pieces depicting eighteenth-century subjects, their themes, and precise yet rich treatment reminiscent of Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891) and Mariano José Bernardo Fortuny(1838–1874).

It is not necessary for our enjoyment to get even a glimpse of the occupants of these rooms, because we can feel their presence. He ultimately abandoned that subject matter as well, devoting himself in the last decades of his life to the elegant interiors that surrounded him in his château and in his Paris apartment.

Elizabeth Prelinger The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000)

Luce Artist Biography

Walter Gay was born into an old New England family and spent most of his adult life in Paris, as did many American artists of his generation.

Instead he featured eighteenth-century woodwork, furnishings, and decorative objects, a reflection not only of his taste as a collector but also of the contemporary interest in the Rococo style. He supported himself during this period by painting still lifes such as Wild Flowers, 1876 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven).

Financial assistance from a group of friends enabled him to study in Europe beginning in the spring of 1876.

He kept a residence in Boston, maintaining his ties there by serving as a correspondent and advisor to the Museum of Fine Arts.